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Euro 2024 in Numbers: Attendance Records, Viewership Peaks, and a Boost in Alcohol-Free Beer Sales

After Spain became the first team to win the UEFA European Championship on four occasions, SportsPro picks out the key attendance, TV viewership, and social engagement figures that underlined the international soccer tournament’s appeal in Europe and beyond.

Unfancied by many before the tournament, but with the most daring of playing styles, Spain made history in winning a record fourth men’s UEFA European Championship, thanks to a 2-1 triumph over England in the final. Mikel Oyarzabal’s late winner sealed a historic victory for the Spaniards, bringing the curtain down on a dramatic tournament in Germany. While many of the world’s elite players delighted fans, there were also historic moments for so-called smaller European nations, who added unpredictability and intrigue in spades.

Euro 2024 marked a return to normality for UEFA after the previous edition of the event was staged across numerous European cities under Covid-19 restrictions a year later than planned in 2021. With all games played in Germany this time around, there was a jovial and vibrant atmosphere across the country, where fans from all over the world gathered for the competition. As the Spanish celebrations continue, SportsPro unpacks the headline numbers that have been released both during and following the final whistle.

Attendance Records Set in Germany

This year’s Euros have set a new attendance benchmark for UEFA, with more fans going to games than ever before. Approximately 2.67 million fans attended the 51 games played across ten stadiums, surpassing the previous record of 2.43 million set at Euro 2016 in France. The overall total comes close to UEFA’s pre-tournament target of 2.7 million, suggesting the governing body will have roughly reached its aim of €300 million (US$328 million) in ticket revenue.

The return of full stadiums for the Euros following Covid-19 was a welcome sight for UEFA, which saw the previous edition in 2021 deliver a cumulative attendance of 1.1 million due to restrictions on the number of fans allowed to attend games in person. Each tournament venue was at least 96 percent capacity throughout the tournament, according to the Stadium Database website. UEFA has said that fans representing more than 190 countries attended games, demonstrating the tournament’s ability to attract fans from outside Europe.

Notably, several games saw a higher attendance than the final at Berlin’s Olympiastadion, which was attended by 65,600 spectators, making the title-decider the game with the lowest occupancy rate of 92.5 percent compared to all other Euro 2024 matches. The Olympiastadion staged the most-attended group stage game between Poland and Austria, which attracted 69,455 fans. The same stadium was the venue for the tournament’s highest attendance of 70,091, recorded for the Netherlands’ quarter-final victory over Turkey.

UEFA’s ‘Fans First’ program ensured that a certain amount of group stage matches were available for as little as €30 (US$32.80), resulting in more than 387,000 tickets sold. UEFA reported that over 1.1 million tickets were sold in both the Fans First and category three tiers, including group stage matches at prices starting from €60 (US$65.50).

Fans were also encouraged to visit fan zones set up in the host cities to sample the tournament’s atmosphere. European soccer’s governing body said that a total of 5.8 million supporters packed into the ten fan zones, not including those who were there during the final. The evening of 5th July, featuring the quarter-final between host nation Germany and eventual champions Spain, was the highest-attended day of the tournament, with 547,000 fans recorded across the fan zones. Ticket holders made use of the free public transport offered by the host nation, with more than 850,000 UEFA Fan Pass users activating their tickets to get around the host cities on matchday.

A Tournament that Dominated on TV

While a record number of fans attended games in person, Euro 2024 also attracted millions of television viewers both in Germany and around the world. The opening game saw 22.5 million Germans tune in to see their national team record a 5-1 victory over Scotland on public service broadcaster ZDF, which had a 69 percent TV audience share. Every subsequent game featuring the hosts attracted more than 23 million viewers, peaking at an average audience of 26.13 million viewers for ARD’s coverage of the quarter-final defeat to Spain, equal to a huge 80.9 percent audience share and the highest TV rating in Germany in almost ten years.

Although most games were shown by German free-to-air networks, Deutsche Telekom’s pay-TV channel Magenta TV was the only broadcaster in the host country to show every Euro 2024 game. The platform said its coverage was watched by more than 70 million fans overall, doubling the reach achieved during the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Magenta TV had exclusive coverage of some games, such as the round of 16 tie between Austria and Turkey, which drew 4.5 million viewers, nearly double the platform’s previous audience record.

In the UK, England’s run to the final culminated in a combined peak audience of 24.2 million across the BBC and ITV, with an average audience of 22.3 million watching from kick-off to the final whistle. This was down considerably from when Gareth Southgate’s side reached the final of Euro 2020, which was watched by an average UK audience of 29.85 million on the same channels. While the BBC drew the lion’s share of UK viewership with a peak of 17.83 million, ITV’s 26 percent audience share was its highest for a major men’s soccer tournament final since records began.

In Spain, RTVE netted 13.6 million viewers for its coverage of the decider, translating to an audience share of 78.7 percent. This was the PSB’s biggest audience for a soccer game since Spain’s win over Italy in the Euro 2012 final.

The tournament’s audience was not just limited to Europe. In the US, Fox Sports drew 6.43 million viewers for its coverage of the final, making it the most-watched Euros broadcast in the country on record. The network’s coverage averaged 1.68 million viewers for each game, making this year’s edition the most-watched Euros in the US ever in English.

The strong figures for the final bode well for UEFA, which announced before the game that Euro 2024 was on course to achieve a global cumulative audience of more than five billion viewers.

Social Engagement Provides Significant Boost to Teams’ Support

Ahead of the final, UEFA said its official European Championship channels on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X, and WhatsApp added more than 14 million new followers since the tournament began. Together, those accounts had seen 335 million engagements and 2.8 billion video views before the deciding match. TikTok specifically announced that all participating team accounts had amassed almost 3.5 billion video views as of 15th July. Besides the popularity of teams such as France, the Netherlands, and Spain, the short-form video platform highlighted that Georgia, Turkey, and Germany saw the biggest jump in followers and engagement.

England’s official account increased its following by almost 300,000 during the tournament, with behind-the-scenes content from the team proving to be a hit with fans. TikTok also shared that almost two million posts with the Euro 2024 hashtag were created during the tournament, while more than 30,000 posts used the official Euro 2024 creative effect, which enabled users to make a blind ranking of past tournament legends.

Meanwhile, the tournament’s official in-app hub, providing real-time updates and highlights, saw almost 13 million visits from fans, with most coming from supporters in Germany, Italy, and the UK in particular. From a monitoring perspective, UEFA revealed after the group stage that it had reported 308 posts directly to social media platforms out of 4,656 flagged for review. Seventy-one percent of the abusive posts were then acted on by the platforms, which removed posts after an average of 75 minutes.

Economic Boosts, Alcohol-Free Beer Sales, and Other Business

England’s Euros success translated to strong sales of team merchandise. Adobe data revealed that the quarter-final win over Switzerland resulted in online sales increasing 1,341 percent above normal levels. Before the semi-final, the company predicted shirt sales would spike as much as 1,500 percent if England were to progress to the tournament’s decider. Ahead of the final, research by VoucherCodes found that the British economy benefitted from a £3.1 billion (US$4.02 billion) boost during the tournament. After the decider, market research firm Kantar found that beer sales in the UK increased on average by 13 percent on days England played their games. Notably, no and low-alcohol beer sales soared by 38 percent, with Kantar attributing this to the fact that most England matches were held on weekdays.

In Germany, however, a predicted economic boost may not have occurred as many had hoped. According to a survey from the German Hotel and Catering Association (DEHOGA), 88 percent of participants reported no positive impact from the tournament, while just 8.1 percent found they had benefitted from the event. This was partly attributed to the poor weather, with storms frequently occurring in Germany during the competition.

Elsewhere, UEFA confirmed before the final that its climate fund had invested a total of €7 million in German amateur soccer clubs and regional associations, with the goal of boosting the development of sustainable infrastructure. Most funded projects will focus on sustainable energy sources, with projects related to water, waste, and mobility also receiving investment.

Source: SportsPro Media